Wisconsin School for Beginning Market Growers

By Russ Nellis



Kelli and Scarlet went to a class at the University of Madison called "Wisconsin School for Beginning Market Growers". It was a three day class and they came back with loads of great ideas and information. The class was taught by coordinator John Hendrickson and three different full-time farmers. The farms represented were Spring Hill Community Farm, Luna Circle Farm and Shooting Star Farm. Two of the three operate as CSA's. The third, Shooting Star Farm grows mostly for high end restaurants and farmers markets.



Last year, two major drawbacks for growing on a larger scale than any of us were used to, was that of planting and weed management. Thankfully these two components of growing crops were covered thoroughly in the class. Various labor-saving devices for planting were discussed and natural methods of weed-control were shared.



At the Nellis farm for instance, we planted 4 beds of carrots with approximately 1500 seeds per bed. Also we planted by the 'square-foot method', with 16 seeds per square foot. That meant being bent over, down on hands and knees, hand-planting over 6000 individual carrot seeds! Both time consuming and hard on the back. We really like growing by the square-foot method because it is nice and tidy and takes up very little space. The biggest draw back is that it is very labor-intensive. Then, before you know it, weeds start cropping up and it soon becomes an all- consuming effort in keeping them under control. So the information the ladies learned at the class should prove invaluable for the 2009 growing season.



Also, Scarlet and Kelli enjoyed hearing the first-hand accounts of how the three different farmers operate their farms, how they started, what they learned in the course of time and where they are at today.



Spring Hill Community Farm, one of the featured farms, is a CSA and they happen to have a nice video about their farm posted on YouTube. Their video, which is the one posted below, gives a nice overview of what their CSA looks like.

It's nice to be able to look at how other people are doing things and to see if we can incorporate any of what they are doing into our system. And we were greatly encouraged in that it looks as though we really are right on track. We are starting out in a very similar way as these folks did. And we have a lot going for us already with plenty of space and lots of tools already at our disposal.

We are anticipating an exciting year ahead us and are looking forward to trying out some new things for the up coming season!